I don't see why it needs to exist given the fact a hopped up I mac could do the same ..

A "hopped up iMac" does not offfer a 12-core Xeon processor or dual high end graphics cards; these are very different categories of product.

On the other hand, I agree that probably a large proportion of people who needed a "workstation tower" in the past are now quite adequately served by a high-end iMac, especially if what expansion is needed can be handled by an iMac viaThunderbolt and/or USB3.

A "hopped up iMac" does not offfer a 12-core Xeon processor or dual high end graphics cards; these are very different categories of product.

On the other hand, I agree that probably a large proportion of people who needed a "workstation tower" in the past are now quite adequately served by a high-end iMac, especially if what expansion is needed can be handled by an iMac viaThunderbolt and/or USB3.

The problem with the iMac will always be the display unless Apple does something to make it better.

Why buy and iMac just to sit a nice NEC in front of it?

Now for cooter, as a tether device on location ( and I think that was what he was alluding to) that iMac is better than a Macbook if you want a bigger screen and less cases.

I've been holding off on buying a PC to see WHEN Apple's tower would come out... now everything has changed. For most of my motion work the Nvidia cards are far more productive. Both Premier and Resolve make better use of CUDA than Open CL. I also need FAST storage. My SAS RAID will do about 800Mb/s at best, are there any Thunderbolt RAIDs that beat that? Even match it? Also, Thunderbolt is as fast as, what, 4x PCIe? That makes external PCI housings really unattractive.

I've been holding off on buying a PC to see WHEN Apple's tower would come out... now everything has changed. For most of my motion work the Nvidia cards are far more productive. Both Premier and Resolve make better use of CUDA than Open CL. I also need FAST storage. My SAS RAID will do about 800Mb/s at best, are there any Thunderbolt RAIDs that beat that? Even match it? Also, Thunderbolt is as fast as, what, 4x PCIe? That makes external PCI housings really unattractive.

For most of my motion work the Nvidia cards are far more productive. Both Premier and Resolve make better use of CUDA than Open CL.

I also need FAST storage. My SAS RAID will do about 800Mb/s at best, are there any Thunderbolt RAIDs that beat that? Even match it?

On CUDA, I agree about current support of CUDA vs openCL, but idealistically, I like the idea of Apple pushing the open standard openCL that is supported by multiple hardware vendors over the proprietary CUDA, which locks one in to Nvidia graphic cards. (Small irony: Apple has pioneered and is championing the open standard openCL approach.)

On external hard drives:- With spinning disks, they are the speed limit, and that is where that 800Mb/s comes from: SAS and TB2 are almost "idling" with them.- With solid state mass storage, TB2 seems to offer the highest bandwidth at 20Gb/s per channel, compared to 12Gb/s for SAS, 6Gb/s for eSATA, and 5Gb/s for USB3, but with a recent plan announced to upgrade USB3 to 10Gb/s.

We have the newest iMac also in the office (and 2 MacPro's and an older iMac).IF the MacPro is highly overpriced (which I think it will be) I will probably switch to the iMac and use the external PCI-E housing there.The thing however that really turns me away from the iMac is it's screen, I'm used to an Adobe RGB monitor, and although the new iMac looks gorgeous the image quality is highly inaccurate.

So yeah, Apple is not good there.

We tested some four cam recordings and I can do an multicam edit on the iMac without slowdown so in theory that machine would work just fine (also my old 12 core will work fine), so I'm not yet jumping up and down that I MUST upgrade, but I'm not negative about the new look, I do see some advantages of it. Problem is indeed you're locked in videocards, on the other hand if the software is optimized for those cards... well I just have to see (like we all).

Let's say the new MacPro will sell for 5000.00 than it's game over for me.I'll wait till the 12 core doesn't cut it anymore and get a new iMac, add a big SSD drive and work from that one and just add two aRGB monitors and ignore the original monitor or keep it for my mails.

If it sells for 3000.00-3500.00 I will probably switch, over here the distri gives great cash backs, meaning I will probably have to shelve out 1500.00-2000.00 and I'm back up to date again. It all depends on the price for what I will do.

Seeing the drive, 2 videocards, memory etc. I'm afraid it's the MacPro I will never own, because honestly I'm afraid the machine will retail from 5000,00 and up. And for the love of it that's way too much and I will go to the iMac in 2014.

I was in the apple store replacing my phone and it's probably been a year since I've walked into one.

For the first time, I didn't look at any product, didn't inquire about anything new, because other than a phone upgrade there was nothing there I needed, though looking around the store there was more retail space given for headphones than there was desktops.

I guess that tells me something.

I agree with T, get a different monitor and an I mac and your good to go, unless you need pc slot expansion for video.

Maybe some enterprising third party will come up with a pci box that thunderbolts into an I-mac then I guess it's game over for Apple desktops.

Apple's monitors compared even to some lowly Dell's are just dismal.

It's funny during Apple's difficult period they made great professional gear, not so great consumer products.

Now, it's the opposite, which we all know works for them, just not so well for us.

It's funny during Apple's difficult period they made great professional gear, not so great consumer products.

Now, it's the opposite, which we all know works for them, just not so well for us.

IMO

BC

Yeah the monitor thing is just odd. The last good ACD I bought was in 2006. Its matt, a 24". Even illumination. Profiles up well. I still have it, works great. Its no Eizo, and I can see the difference, but its not night and day. The new ACD's and iMac monitors are great for watching movies, but are very inconsistent between samples. They don't get dark enough, either, which drives me nuts. The MacBook Pro matte screen I'm looking at now is OK for field work, but still not GREAT.

Am I reading the specs right...will there be no dual CPU option on the new Mac Pro?

Indeed, it seems that the second GPU is intended to provide the extra cores for parallel tasks: I have read that only one GPU is setup to handle normal graphics, so the other is effectively a massively multi-core numeric coprocessor.

Unless you are doing serious motion, an iMac is ideal for a stills shooter. Get an Eizo or NEC for critical color work and get to work.

Agree. I would not worry about Macs if for stillConfig.However, I'm noticing here (during this year) still photographersBuying peecees for their "extra" motion works, evenOn people who were pc allergics and all mac equiped.The only little hassle is that the prores writing is notCross-platform. But in any case, the motion industryCan't rely any longuer on codecs that block the game.Prores is good,commercialy unviable. There are other options like dnxhd 444 for adquisition, recently implementedIn the Alexa, and for archiving-mastering jpeg2000.Even in democratized motion, raw video is on the cornerAnd as it became fashionable to edit and compoNatively with consummer codecs, this practiseRequires lots of power. But for stills ? Mac is a great choice.

There is nothing that goes into serious composite into a codec form,but sequences of Tiffs or Open Exr wich requires less calculationsbut mostly bigger storage. And even so, people with Mac will be ableto cut comfortably with the new Macs, just that there will be fasteroptions out there, but I see the difference will be critical more on applications like Smoke or Avid DS where the operators generaly do all the pipeline witha single software intead of fragmentated, or people who work 4knatively with accelerators. For those, it's probably timeto look at peecees.

The big deal is Prores. Because it's really the 4x4 codec suitable foreverything. But not the only one. The set to go from pc to mac and vice-versajust to keep the prores writing is no fun and time consumer.Be very aware of that. On pc you will read your proresMaterial but have to conform to another grocery.

In fact, for the people who are doin motion but not involved into theprofesional chain as we know it, FCPx plus the new Macs couldin fact be a better option than peecees.It would work fast and easier to learn.

When I think about it, those new Macs aren't that bad,there aren't just for everyone's needs, like FCPx.

Didn't tried it. When it showed-up there was issues reported and it seemed to me "not ready" or a work-in-progress. But I could be wrong,(and it remains to be seen the metadatas area)

but the main reason is that I use Avid and therefore DNxHD works very well (even the 444 version).

Also, this is a "rescue" solution, because you need to ingest an exported medium in this software to write in prores, wich is in the end double writting.Once to get the media out, and then once to get its prores version from the software.It's not taking a QT reference (that I know) or not possible directly from the editor.Therefore it can't interest very much the people who were on Macs or have invested on PC but kept their Macs.But it can be a good option to have always disponible just in case. (but I'd test the metadatas generated, because PR4444 normaly being proprietarywe are talking about a "hack" or so)